Published by The Royal Bank of Canada

The Importance of Teaching

We are all in favour of education, butwe tend to take for granted the peoplewho provide it. If our society cares aboutthe future, it will resume giving teachersthe support and credit they deserve ...

[] Teaching is one of those things, like editing anewspaper or managing a baseball team, thateverybody thinks he or she can do better than theexperts. Everybody has taught something tosomebody at one time or another, after all. We beginour amateur teaching careers as children byimposing our superior knowledge on our youngersiblings and playmates. As students, we passjudgment among our peers on this or that teacher’scapabilities. As adults, those of us who do not teachprofessionally stand ever ready to criticize thosewho do.

An educator himself, Bergen Evans once struckback at people who presume that any fool could bea teacher. Commenting on George Bernard Shaw’saphorism, "He who can does. He who cannotteaches," Evans wrote: "The common inferencefrom this much-quoted statement, that the teacheris a sort of failure in the world of action, greatlycomforts anti-intellectuals. But almost to a mansuccessful men of action (all of whom think theycould be teachers if they turned aside to it) haveproved failures as teachers." He did not documenthis information, but it rings true.

In any case, Shaw’s quip does not stand up tologic. Teachers can do something, and do dosomething; they teach. Like any other professionalactivity, teaching requires a cultivated ability. Tobe done exceptionally well, it also requires a specialtalent and a sense of vocation. There are "bornteachers" just as there are "born statesmen" or"born musicians."

Practised diligently by men and women of talent,teaching is as much of an art as Shaw’s metier of

play-writing. The trouble from the teacher’s pointof view is that there are a lot more teachers thanplaywrights or men of action like generals orfinanciers. Education is one of our nation’s biggestindustries. Because of the sheer number of thosewho teach in schools, colleges and universities, theyhave become part of the landscape. Like the familiarfeatures of a landscape, they tend to be overlooked.

Still, there are probably many more greatteachers labouring among the crowd than there aregreat authors or actors basking in the spotlight.They could be found anywhere in the educationalsystem from a graduate to a country school.Teaching, as measured by its results, does not lenditself to a division between the big and the bushleagues. Those results come in the form of thequality of the people it shapes.

Unlike sports, politics, entertainment, the artsor the law, teaching does not give rise to "stars."Nobody ever got a Nobel Prize for teachingachievements. True, many academics have come infor high honours, but always for something otherthan their work in the classroom -- a book, aneconomic treatise, a ground-breaking scientificexperiment.

School teachers, as opposed to universityprofessors, are particularly under-recognized. Whois to say that a woman conducting a kindergartenclass may not be contributing as much to societythan the most degree-laden university president?Given the evidence that our very first brush witheducation leaves a permanent stamp on ourcharacters, that teacher could be molding a futureAbraham Lincoln or a Madame Curie. More likely,

though, she is molding a whole class of the type ofresponsible citizens upon whom the weUbeing of oursociety depends.

Teaching is a creative act, never more so than inprimary and secondary schools. Good teachers, likegood artists, have their own individual styles ofperforming. They also respect the individuality oftheir students in the realization that everybodylearns through his or her own perceptions. The storyis told of a legendary teacher who was asked at thestart of the term what his course matter would be."I don’t know," he said. "I haven’t seen mystudents yet."

It would be a wonderful world if every teacherdeeply understood each and every child and put thatunderstanding into effect, but that would be askingtoo much of human nature. Teachers can becometired and impatient, and give up on troublesome orbackward children. They have their personalprejudices, and it is sometimes a struggle with theirown personalities to give every pupil the attentionhe or she requires.

The world would be equally wonderful if everyyoungster came to school to learn. There is aelement of truth, however, to the old teachers’ roomjoke that for every one who wants to teach, thereare 20 not wanting to be taught. The teacher hasthe peculiar dual task of inculcating knowledgewhile at the same time breaking down resistance toits inculcation. It is part of the challenge of teachingto bring promising students around to the pointwhere they are willing and even eager to learn.

’The mediocre teacher tells ...The great teacher inspires’

Because instruction is an interpersonal affair,different teaching styles work on different students.An abrasive performer might drive his more timidstudents into their shells. But then there was Rud-yard Kipling, who, In his autobiography Somethingof Myself, recalled his English and classics master."He had a violent temper, no disadvantage in han-dling boys used to direct speech, and a gift of school-master’s sarcasm which must have been a relief tohim and was certainly a treasure trove to me ...Under him I came to feel that words could be usedas weapons, for he did me the honour to talk to me

plentifully ... One learns more from a good scholarin a rage than from a score of lucid and laboriousdrudges."

Kipling’s phrase, "a good scholar in a rage,"should remind us of the point, often forgotten bythose who belittle teachers, that the best of themhave a broad and deep range of knowledge. First-class teachers seek to ignite in their students anenthusiasm for their subjects by example andleadership. They are more than instructors; they arerole models for students. "The mediocre teachertells. The good teacher explains. The superiorteacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires,"William Arthur Ward wrote.

Just what makes a first-class teacher has alwaysbeen a matter of debate between educational liberalsand conservatives. Even the traditional method ofteaching by terror -- spare not the rod and spoil notthe child -- has its supporters among parents whofeel that permissiveness in the schools has gone toofar. On the other hand, there seems to be generalagreement that the traditional technique of makingstudents learn by rote produces not rounded humanbeings but programmed automatons. An anony-mous principal once warned his staff: "Don’t thinkthat the mind is a warehouse, and that you are hereto stuff it full of goods."

On the other hand, a certain amount of didacticlearning is necessary to show the student the way."Some flabby persons try to make education pain-less," one-time teacher W. E. McNeill wrote. "Donot,’ they say, ’ask students to learn facts, but teachthem to think.’ O thinking -- what intellectualcrimes are committed in thy name! How can a manthink if he doesn’t know?"

Instilling a zest for learningis instilling a zest for life

At the same time no one would dispute that theaim of education should be to produce individualsableto think for themselves and not merely followwhat someone else has told them. And the way forteachers to accomplish this is to concentrate onwhat M.F. Ashley Montagu called "the drawingout, not the pumping in." Teaching should excitea youngster’s natural curiosity. Instead of giving

pat answers, it should raise questions. It was a wisemother who asked her young son after school not"what did you learn today?" but "what questionsdid you ask today?"

It has been said a thousand times in differentways that education should not stop at school; thatthe proper role of the school is to prepare the mindfor life-long learning. The theory is that you do notget an education in a classroom; you learn how toget an education, which in the long run you can onlyacquire by yourself. In fact, the word "educate"comes from the Latin educere, which means "lead-ing out" the student into a wider world ofknowledge. It is by stimulating a zest for learningin general that teachers can perform their greatestservice to those in their care, for a zest for learningis a zest for life. And a zest for life is what allowspeople to live contentedly for all of their days.

As in writing, teaching is at its most efficaciouswhen it shows instead of tells. The best teachersmake their points by way of illustration. Better still,they demonstrate wherever possible. Any teacherwould do well to keep in mind the Chinese saying:"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do andI understand."

"The method of teaching which approaches mostnearly to the method of investigation is incompara-bly the best; since, not content with serving up afew barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stockfrom which they grew," wrote Edmund Burke, whopossessed one of the best-conditioned minds in his-tory. By investigating ideas, the teacher becomesa participant in the act of learning. "To be a teacherin the right sense is to be a learner," Kierkegaardwrote.

Given what is now known about the psychologyof learning, everyone ideally would be taught in asmall group with the teacher acting as a participant,leading the students in the pursuit of ideas andmotivating them to think about life in all itsaspects. Instruction would be tailored to thelearner’s personality, and tightly focussed onindividual weaknesses and strengths.

The teacher is expected toserve as a surrogate parent

In a world that is far from ideal, that is not thereality. "In education, we have long given lip serv-ice to the fact that all human beings are different,"

said Earl C. Kelley, professor of education at WayneUniversity. "But we have proceeded as if this werenot so."

The exigencies of economics lead to uniformity.Even in prosperous jurisdictions, education isstrapped for funds. At its worst, inadequate fund-ing makes for over-crowded classrooms, and educa-tion becomes a kind of mass production process,complete with a fair percentage of rejects. Teachersbeing human, there is always a temptation to treatstudents as so much raw material to be fed througha diploma-producing factory. The temptation iscompounded by the fact that the educational sys-tem can be satisfied by filling "production norms."

This helps to explain why, for instance, it is pos-sible for some young people to graduate from highschool unable to read and write adequately. Whensuch things happen, the cry goes up: "Where weretheir teachers, for heaven’s sake?" But to blameteachers for the failings of modern public educationis a classic case of shooting the messenger. Teachersdid not invent the system, nor do they run it. It isthe product of politics, and it is administered byeducational bureaucrats whom teachers oftenregard as their sworn enemies.

If the public, through its elected and appointeddelegates, opts for a levelling process in which nostudent is allowed to fail, or curricula so soft thatyouths can loaf through their school days, it is notthe fault of the teaching profession. If parents arecareless enough or dumb enough not to notice thatbig Johnny can’t read, they are hardly entitled toprotest.

"If a doctor, lawyer or dentist had 40 people inhis office at one time, all of whom had differentneeds, and some of whom didn’t want to be thereand were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer ordentist, without assistance, had to treat them allwith professional excellence for nine months, thenhe might have some conception of a classroomteacher’s job," wrote Donald D. Quinn, himself anexperienced teacher. Faced with this daunting sit-uation, some teachers tire of catering to individualneeds and striving for professional excellence.

"A teacher is like a candle which lights othersin consuming itself," wrote Giovani Ruffini in anearly description of teacher burn-out. In inner cityschools such as the one referred to in Tom Wolfe’sThe Bonfire of the Vanities, where student

behaviour ranges from "co-operative to life-threatening," burn-out must be a terrible profes-sional hazard.

You do not have to look as far as the slums ofNew York to see where social trends have added tothe already-heavy burden borne by teachers. Brokenhomes, teen-age promiscuity and drug and alcoholabuse are common in nice middle-class neighbour-hoods too. Parents are often too apathetic or busyto meet their parental responsibilities. Problems ofyouth that were once dealt with at home have beendumped into the schools.

In a materialistic society, young people havetheir attitudes shaped by a commercial pre-packaged youth culture which encourages precoc-ity and contrariety towards authority. Materialismalso permeates parental attitudes. In his recentadmirable book The Closing of the American Mind,Allan Bloom wrote: "Fathers and mothers have lostthe idea that the highest aspiration they might havefor their children is for them to be wise -- as pri-ests, prophets and philosophers are wise. Special-ized competence and success are all they canimagine." In this spiritual vacuum, it is often leftto teachers to instil whatever higher values a youthmight have.

Society has always expected an awful lot fromits teachers, and now we are expecting even morefrom them. We expect them to serve to a largedegree as surrogate parents, dealing with the emo-tional tangles and torments of the adolescent years.Teaching is one of those rare jobs in which one’swork is wrapped up in one’s personality. It is verydemanding psychologically. The abdication ofresponsibility within so many homes has added tothe psychological drain.

Yet at the same time as the complications andvexations of teaching life multiply, the public per-sists in under-valuing the teacher. Every thinkingperson would agree that the hope of the human racelies chiefly in education, but most of us pay littleattention to the people who provide this preciousservice, nor do we give them much support in thevital job they do.

Fidel Castro had his priorities straight when hedeclared: "We need teachers -- a heroine in everyclassroom." Teaching is not usually associated with

heroics, even though it takes actual physicalcourage to face up to the lurking threat of violencein some North American high schools today. Theonly teacher-hero in recent popular literature whoreadily comes to mind appears in Thomas Flana-gan’s novel The Year of the French, in which theprotagonist risks imprisonment to instruct poorIrish children in illicit schools proscribed by theEnglish in the interests of keeping the Irish in subje-gation. He and his enemies appreciated just howimportant education can be when freedom is atstake.

A tradition that has beenlost and should be found

More commonly, however, the heroism is not sodramatic. "If I had a child who wanted to be ateacher, I would bid him Godspeed as if he weregoing to war," wrote James Hilton, author of thegreat novel of teaching, Goodbye Mr. Chips. "Forindeed the war against prejudice, greed and ignor-ance is eternal, and those who dedicate themselvesto it give their lives no less because they may liveto see some fraction of the battle won."

Not every teacher is a hero or heroine, of course.There are good, bad and indifferent ones, rangingfrom those who totally devote their lives to theirstudents to those who totally devote their lives tothemselves. Our social priorities do not make it easyto encourage the best and the brightest to teach.Surveys of students who consistently get top marksin university show that they intend to go into moreprestigious and more lucrative professions. To alarge extent, teachers themselves tend to be diffi-dent about their occupation. "I beg of you," saidWilliam G. Carr to a representative teacher, "tostop apologizing for being a member of the mostimportant ... profession in the world."

"Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for itis a lost tradition," Jacques Barzun wrote. If thissociety knows what is good for it, that regard willbe restored. Parents and other concerned citizenswill do all they can to make a teacher’s life lesstroublesome and give due credit to the profession.To a large extent, teachers are in charge of thefuture. The fate of people in the future depends onhow well they are taught today.